Bits and Pieces of information about Slaves, Free Blacks and People of
Colorhave been assembled here for those of searching for their ancestral
histories.This stuff is hard to find, but we have put it closer to the topof
the list of things we want to do. If anyone would like to share their info with us, we would be most happyto post it, and give you a link to your page or e-mail.

GEORGIA SLAVE CEMETERY. A FLORIDA TIMES-UNION article by AllisonSchaefers, begins: "KINGSLAND -- Deep in the woods off U.S. 17,at the end of a winding dirt road where the vast BernePlantation once stood, passers-by will find a peaceful clearingwith more than 1,000 graves -- some marked with homemade mortarheadstones, others with simple white wooden crosses. Brightgreen wisps of grass dot the landscape as if the graves wererecently dug, but the last burial in the Holzendorf cemetery wasin 1939. The grass was planted just weeks ago by the CamdenCounty Sheriff's Office as part of a huge cemetery cleanupproject." For the full story, see
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/042900/met_2942238.html

Typical slave cabin.

There has been a lot of discussion of “What makes a race” I copied the
following several years ago from an old issue of “The Protector” A newspaper
that was published in the late 1800’s in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.

IT IS A FALSE CONNOTATION THAT CREOLES HAVE BLACK IN THEIR BLOOD
People with Black blood are called:

Everyone has heard about the Emancipation Proclamation. Most of us, however,
don't have a clear picture ofthe relationship between the Emancipation
Proclamation and the ending of slavery in the United States.
The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln on 1 January 1863
as part of an ultimatum to the Confederated states to rejoin the Union. The
Proclamation declared that slaves in any state in rebellion against the Union
(precisely those places where the Union could not then enforce its rule) would
be free.
The Proclamation did not apply to any of the states then in the Union, where
slavery
continued to exist. What the Emancipation Proclamation did, however, was to
signal
that the civil war would be more than a war to preserve the union, its outcome
would eventually
mean the ending of slavery, and this is the Proclamation's primary significance.

Because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln is usually
associated with the ending of slavery. As President of the Union and Commander
in Chief of the Union forces, of course, Lincoln played an important role in
leading the nation toward the eradication of slavery, but this was a road that
Lincoln took reluctantly and out of necessity for preservation of the Union, not
because of inherent and deep-seated convictions about the immorality of slavery.

In August 1862, for example, President Lincoln wrote the following to Horace
Greeley (an anti-slavery journalist) "My paramount object in this struggle is to
save the Union and is not either to save or to destroy slavery." [Abraham
Lincoln to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862: in T. Harry Williams (editor)
Selected Writings and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln (1980), p. 174]. President
Lincoln was assassinated on 15 April 1865; The 13th Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery in the country, was
enacted on 18 December 1865, some eight months after Lincoln's death.